Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
The Research, Development, 
Commercialization, and Adoption of Drought 
and Stress-Tolerant Crops
Gregory Graff, Gal Hochman and David Zilberman
1   The Importance of Stress-Tolerant Crops
Global crop production tripled over five decades from 1960 to 2010 (Fig. 1.1 ). In
the next four decades from 2010 to 2050, global crop production must double yet
again if supply is to keep up with expected growth in demand. For not only is
global population growing—with basic food requirements thus expanding propor-
tionately—but the burgeoning middle classes of Asia, Latin America, and Africa
are consuming ever more livestock products and processed foods, thus amplify-
ing those populations' demand for basic crop commodity output (Rosegrant et al.
2002 ). There is also growing demand for crops to produce biofuels, with numerous
countries legislating ambitious renewable fuel standards (Rajagopal et al. 2007 ).
These and other pressures have manifested in recent upward trends in agricultural
commodity prices (Trostle 2008 ). Limited supplies and higher prices of food in-
evitably impact most the poorest and most food-insecure members of the human
population, the billion or so who live on the equivalent of one or two dollars a day
and spend a majority of their income on food, resulting in malnutrition, hunger,
poor health, stunted growth, and entrapment in poverty.
The greatest challenge in further increasing agricultural production, it is gener-
ally argued, is that agriculture already operates at or beyond the limits of available
resources—including arable land, fresh water, energy inputs, carbon emissions, and
the loading of excess nutrients and agrochemicals onto neighbouring and down-
stream ecosystems. Further expansions in agricultural production are not feasible,
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